Killing Is A Forte
by Fencing Supplies
Summary: The zombie apocalypse has arrived, and Jack Marston is the entirely too unwilling hero. Luckily he's got his very own side-kick! A nameless undead who Jack christened Mr. Corpse - he's soft spoken and quiet, when he does talk it's to nag Jack about some stupid shit, he's the worst swimmer Jack's ever seen, a bit of a prude, unfairly good with horses and an unbelievable shot.


It was raining hard. Bloody hard. The cowboy was currently stalking through the quickly flooding marshes of Thieves Landing, checking that his guns and ammo belts were strapped on well while scanning the dark and foggy landscape. Anything could attack at anytime. Cougars, outlaws, cannibals, idiots with guns, cannibals with guns, even the ghosts that this area was legendary for.

Ghosts with guns.

"See how the name got picked," Jack muttered to himself as he looked around the 'Ghost Forest', every tree trunk looking like a person, the heavy fog and rain masking what lay in the shadows far too well. The only sound that managed to be heard over the driving rain was the singing and croaking of millions of frogs. It was deafening, the twenty year old couldn't even hear his own ragged breathing. Having only just escaped Thieves Landing alive, Jack's heart was still pounding with adrenaline. And also fury. Those bastards! Fancy shooting at him when he had just single-handily (probably) saved their arses!

Rushing a bit faster now that he was done buckling all his guns safely in place, Jack swore as his boots slipped out from under him and growled loudly the entire fall down the bank, splashing into the shallow swamp river with a vulgar string of curses muffled by the muddy water he was currently dunked under. Jack rose from the creek slowly, wading across the waist high water and angrily pulling tangled weeds off from where they had wrapped around him as he marched up the other side. He slipped again and spun his hands wildly as he tried to say upright - luckily he managed to grab a crocked branch in time.

The cowboy cursed the silvery-grey and disgusting slimy soil that made it nearly impossible for the desert dweller to get out of the swamp. Jack looked down at the ground as he tried to search for footholds in the bank. As he did, a lillipad peeled off from where it had been on his hat and flopped sadly down to land at his feet.

He watched it for a little while in defeat.

What a miserable situation he had found himself in. Groaning, Jack attempted to climb up the slippery bank again, this time with far more success. Breathing in a huge lung full of air, Jack tried to regain his senses as the rain drove down on him, making the brim of his hat shudder constantly with the vibrations of their impact.

Jack scowled and marched off in what he assumed was the correct direction. Pleasingly, in a matter of mere minutes Jack stumbled upon a trial which he recognised and followed it out of the Ghost Forest and into the Great Plains. The rain was a real pain, but Jack couldn't really find it in himself to hate it. It had been a long time since the last good rains. A blissful smile grew across Jack's face as he tried to imagine the heavy rains over Beecher's Hope, watering his land, the dusty ground soaking. The brown shades of the grass will blossom green within days of the storm. The few cattle he had tentatively started to introduce back onto the farm would grow nicely.

Jack usually didn't mind walking. Sometimes he would get down off his horse and spend a good hour walking along beside it if there was no rush. But tonight was different. He was edgy, hand resting on his holstered gun every minute or so. His eyes scanned the horizon relentlessly. For what? He didn't know or even understand. Anything really. Right now it felt like everything was trying to kill him. Jack listened intently for gunfire or screams or... anything. But just like before, nothing could be heard over the roar of the almost tidal rainfall.

His boots sloshed through the growing puddles, relaxing into the swagger he was used to. Managing to stop with his paranoid twitches, Jack concentrated on getting home. For sure, with his usual large stride and rather quick step, he should be home within two hours, and considering it was early morning right now... he _had_ really wanted to get some good sleep tonight, but he supposes, tomorrow night.

Yeah right. That's what hes been telling himself for nearly three years now. Ever since he started to travel. It's only recently Jack has returned to the abandoned farm, finally healed enough to stand the place.

As he crests the top of a rise, he sighs deep and content in through his chest. Even though the heavy rain and the black night hid it from view, Jack knew that from here the distant silo of his barn was just visible above the tree line. Confident he knew where he was now, Jack stopped following the road and walked into the tall grass, striding out into the wild plains with nay a care. He would be a fool to think that there was anything more dangerous out here than him. Not with his five guns, knife, and a random stick of dynamite he had been carrying around since a rather hair raising adventure with a pair of particularly ugly miners.

He walked in soggy silence for a time, boots squelching with all the pond water and the tadpoles that came with it. Under his clothes and nails he could feel the mud drying. It was not the worst he had ever suffered, but it was not the best either.

Lighting started to strike, and the flashes of light lit up the farm he knew had been there all along. The arch way onto his land looking closer than he had expected actually.

Hurdling his own fence Jack chuckled in relief as he saw his very own precious, and more importantly warm, farm house.

Climbing his own steps and opening the door, Jack paused and frowned. He was sure that he left the door open. There was no one in miles game enough to steal from him. Shrugging it off Jack kicked his boots off by the door before heading to the bathroom, socks slapping against the wooden boards. Peeling off his drenched coat and chucking his beloved handy-down hat onto the bathroom's tiled floor. Jack jumped when he caught a sight of himself in the dirty mirror.

He didn't even recognise himself! Maybe those people had been within their right minds to try and shoot him. He looked ghastly! Jack knew he hadn't seen himself in a mirror for nearly a month, but he hadn't realised he looked _this_ bad. Shirtless, he looked frightening, large bruises lined nearly his entire rib cage, black in places and outlined in sickly yellow hues. It was like he had been hit by a train!

Might as well have. Jack thought bitterly. It had hurt just as much.

Gingerly he peeled back the bandages that wrapped around his torso, the deep and weeping wound from where a boar's tusk had dug into him. But while these wounds looked bad it was the smaller but more numerous injuries that really made up his horrifying image. Scratches and burns and small gashes as well as whole sections where his skin had been torn to shreds. Jack bitterly inspected them for the first time under the bathroom light. What else did he expect after being dragged along the ground after a galloping horse? A smile came to Jack's lips as he remembered how he killed that particular idiot.

You would think that the aggressive rain would have done something to clean him off, but layers of grim and mud still coloured him so much that he looked disfigured. With wet hair plastered to his head and a whole months worth of hair growing from his face, Jack reckoned he looked like he had just crawled up from the grave.

He smirked at his reflection, a tasteless joke bouncing around his head as he started banging through the cabinet and drawers looking for a razor and any medicines his mother might have left behind... somewhere. He had purged the entire house of his parent's belongings, but maybe there was a bottle of soothing syrup or cocaine stashed in a corner.

That's when he felt it. He had just enough time to stiffen and grab the razor he'd just laid eyes on before he heard the hoarse voice of whoever was behind him.

"Drop the razor," they said in a strangled, almost struggling sort of way. If Jack was not mistake, which he usually wasn't, that was a barrel of a gun he felt against his head. Wisely, Jack dropped the razor and made no other move.

"Now what the hell are you going in my house?" the stranger asked. Jack's left eye twitched a bit at that comment.

"You're house? This is my house you fucking idio-" Jack's angry and rather badly thought out retort was cut short when the other guy used his free hand to slam Jack's head into the edge of the basin.

"Fuck!" Jack yelled as his hand went to cradle his forehead. Jack snarled when he pulled his hand away to see there it was covered in fresh blood.

"Can I not get a break this week!" Jack cried out in anger as he turned to glare at his attacker. Great... it was one of those decomposing ones. "Argh, what, another one? Where did you crawl out from, you sorry piece of shit?!" he cried, flinging his arms out in exasperation. The corpse suddenly looked very confused.

"Why are you in my house?" It asked him. Jack pressed his hand to his head again and stopped crouching in favour of sitting completely down on his but. He did it in an attempt at making the corpse lower his guard, which was exactly what he did. Pulling his gun from his belt faster than a man could blink, Jack had it trained on the corpse's face, sure to get a clean kill shot if he were to just pull the trigger.

The corpse had no reaction at all. Jack couldn't help but chuckle dryily at the turn of events.

"Look don't go thinking your immortal because you've been resurrected or whatever. I've put down a few of your kind tonight already," he said before distractedly pressing his free hand to the throbbing spot on his skull. He could feel a few trails of blood running down the side of his face. "Fuck!" he hissed as it seemed to increase in pain randomly, not caring about his poor mother who was probably turning over in her grave right now. Probably his father too for that matter, he had always made sure never to swear in front of that guy the few times he was actually around. Pfft what an idiot that guy had been... wait a minute.

Corpse guy... telling him to get out of _his_ house...

Jack suddenly stood up in one smooth motion, now suddenly too focused on looking at the details of the corpse while keeping his gun aimed. He was pretty well rotted, Jack wasn't exactly an expert on aging corpses but it looked like twenty or so years of decay on his guy. He must have been the previous owner before his father look the land over.

Hm. Maybe he could convince the guy to work on the farm? Did the undead need to eat and sleep? He could make for a good ranch hand if not. Hmmmmm.

* * *

(Earlier that Day)

If he just hadn't of stopped to pick those flowers then he wouldn't have been gorged by that boar, and he could have been on his merry way back to Armadillo. He could have been nice and comfortable in the saloon, a full belly and playing poker with the local no hopers - and earning a small fortune while doing so. But no. He just had to have those Prairie Poppies. Good going Jack. Really living up to your name as the roughest, toughest bounty hunter to ever grace this goddamned state of New Austin.

Jack likes to keep his reputation mysterious, or at least undefinable. Was he bad or was he good? Who knows. He was rough as guts and tough as nails and merciless and that's all that matters. Such mystery helped a lot when injured in a place like Thieves Landing, groaning and sweating and walking worse than the hopeless drunks that infested the town. The idiots and outlaws that populated the place gave him a wide berth. Jack leaned on the strong shoulder of his horse when he felt himself swaying and beginning to fall. Once the doctor has administered his crude treatment and boiled him some pain soothing tea to drink, he was kicked to the curb to make room for the steady stream of drunken men with gunshot wounds and broken bones. It hurt but it was business.

At least he knew that he had a place to stay the night. An old friend of his father's always let him stay over night in his attic. Jack thanked the gods as he hitched his horse by the dangerously leaning shack. Making it up the stairs was hard, but the quiet room and modest bed that awaited him in the attic was worth the struggle. For the first time he couldn't even find it in his heart to mind the smell from the pig sty beside the shack.

Collapsing into the cott that was squeezed into the corner of the room, Jack had stripped and tried to block out the loud pounding of his heart that seemed to rattle and echo all around his skull. Sometimes the pain became so intense that his vision blurred into the familiar red haze. He would cover his eyes with his arm then. Trying to breath deep and make the red sight go away. He wanted time to go faster not slower.

Around midnight the pain had started to settle, or at least, Jack had become used to it. He slept fitfully for a few hours before screams woke him up. Screams weren't uncommon in Thieves Landing. But there were a lot of them. Jack had at that point struggled to sit up and look out the grimy windows of the attic.

"Hey! That's my horse!" Jack shouted when he saw a drunk old man start to untie _his_ horse. Jack lunged for the door, forgetting his bruised ribs, and stumbled down the first few steps with a mean scowl.

"Get down off my horse you fat bastard! I'll shoot you in your ugly face if you don't fuck off right back the way you came as-" however, the man seemed more afraid of something else because he paid no mind to the shirtless Jack, but screamed at him one word.

"Run!" the drunk bellowed in a high pitched squeal as he savagely turned _his_ horse for the road and kicked it wildly until it was galloping hard.

"You fucker!" Jack bellowed. Racing back inside Jack grabbed his guns and items. This was exactly why he hated buying horses. They listened to any old idiot that climbed onto their back. Wild mustangs who practically tried to kill anyone who came near them where what Jack preferred. He hurriedly put on the clean cotton pants that he had bought from the doctor and was busy jamming his feet into his boots as he fetched his hat, threw on a jacket that he didn't bother buttoning up, found his trusty repeater, and buckled on his belt full of bullets. Confident that the rest of his items would be safe inside the attic Jack took off after the idiot man, like hell he was getting away with his horse. He had only had the thing for a week!

Jack had raced down the stairs and jumped on the first horse he saw. A dark brown and rather skinny looking animal that was standing under a tree out in the rain. It looked aimless and panicked. Jack wondered if it had wondered here after getting separated from its owner. It was likely, men quickly meet violent ends in his part of New Austin. The horse's saddle was slippery and squeaking from the rain, Jack grimace as he realised there was no blanket between the saddle and the horse's back. He briefly worried around the animal getting burns, but put it out of his mind, vowing to fix it later. Right now he needed to track the bastard down before he got too far out of town. The wet mud made good for tracking, but the worsening rain was washing them away quick.

"On you go, heiya!" Jack shouted as he gathered the reins in one hand and held his gun in the other. Digging his heels into the horses ribs softly as he tried to gauge the animal's obedience levels he was please to find that it was well trained, which was a rare luxury when it came to Jack Marston and horses.

Jack pulled its head around in the direction he wanted to go and eased into the saddle as it quickly increased its speed, the tone of Jack's voice having more of an affecting than whips ever could. As they cleared the buildings of the town, Jack couldn't believe his luck as he spotted his horse in the near distance.

Galloping up the wide trail towards it Jack had trained his gun preparing for the man from before. But as he closed in a scene unfolded that - quite frankly - shocked him.

"Seven hells," Jack whispered in disbelief, bringing the horse with no saddle blanket to a halt. The man was there alright. He seemed to have fallen from the saddle. It was so dark it was hard to make out, but _his_ horse was scared out of her poor mind. She would jump in fright and was quickly backing away, and as she did this, it became obvious that the drunk's foot was still caught in the stirrup of the saddle. His lifeless fat body dragging along the ground after the horse. But that wasn't the disturbing part. Because as the body was dragged along by the freaked out horse. It became clear to Jack that the dark mass was not just the fat man, but there was also a lady leaning over him... chewing into his neck and tearing chunks of flesh away.

"Argh..." was all Jack could say as he watched the scene with raised eyebrows. Quickly he got down off his horse and trained his gun on the feasting woman.

"Ma'am?" Jack asked hesitantly, wanting to know if maybe she had an easy explanation for such behaviors. Though he highly doubted it. She froze and her blood stained face (and hands and chest and...she was drenched in blood) snapped up to stare at him. She made a crazed sort of screaming yowl before leaping clumsily over her meal towards him.

"Okay." Jack commented calmly as he shot her through the head. Working quickly he pulled the drunk man's foot out of his saddle and winced when he realised that it had been broken and snapped so badly it faced the entirely wrong direction. His horse was breathing better now, calmer with the feasting woman gone and a familiar rider at her side. Jack climbed back onto the borrowed horse's saddle and quickly rode off, leading his original steed along side, one hand on the reins, another crooked through the bands of _his_ horse's bridal. I enabled him to keep her close, and the two horses seemed to be finding bravery in each other's presence. Who knew what was going to jump out at them next.

He looked around, fretful of anymore bloodthirsty people streaking on the road. This was too close. Thieves Landing was not even a mile down the road, he could still see the bridge clearly. If she was this close she must have friends, to be this confident. Jack shoot his head and concentrated forward.

"Damn cannibals" he said to the two freaked out horses, "getting bolder and bolder". _His_ horse was really getting worked up, kicking every fourth stride and foam coming from her mouth even though Jack knew it couldn't be from overwork. Quiet plainly scared out of her wits. Jack grumbled to himself and tried to draw her closer. Now that they were nearing Thieves Landing again, Jack could heard the screams once more. Too many screams. And quite a few of them, Jack realised in horror, sounded like the absolutely mad screams of the cannibal lady.

Had a large group of cannibals descended upon the town? Jack dropped the reins to take up his gun. quickened the horse's pace with a tap of his heels. As they rode back into town, he now saw what he had missed earlier. It was dark and raining, plus it was Thieves Landing. There was always bodies in the street and a gun going off somewhere. Maybe his pain had dulled his senses, maybe he had been thinking too fast or riding too fast before to properly focus on what was happening around him. But he saw it now. A hoard of cannibals had obvious descended. Slightly impressed by the coordinated attack, since Jack was sure all cannibals, at least all the ones he had meet up to this point, were lunatics.

It was a bit hard to tell between the deranged cannibals and the flailing victims, but quickly Jack started to pick off the ones closest to where he was on the outskirts of the town. One gentleman took notice of him and came stumbling over to him.

"Now sir," Jack eased the man as he fired his third shot into the guy's chest. This was unnatural! He wasn't even flinching. Jack swore and wasted a few seconds making sure his head shot aligned perfectly. Even then, he managed a few steps before he crumpled.

"Well fuck," Jack said as he shared a look with the horses. Making his mind up, Jack dropped down from the saddle and went about removing the tack from the skinny brown nag with practiced ease. Even with three or so cannibals starting to shuffle towards him. With saddle and bridle gone, Jack slapped the brown horse on its backside as he encouraged it to get the hell out of here.

"Go join the mustangs you skinny nag," he shouted as it returned to him confused. Spinning around Jack was careful to aim for a head shot with the clumsy cannibals, he even used his red vision with one that was limping a bit more erratically than the others.

Jack swore as he climbed up into the saddle of _his_ horse. He needed to get to where he had left his other guns and rounds of ammo. Unfortunately that was all the way in the center of the cannibal infested town. Eyeing what looked like a town full of wriggling bodies, Jack spurred his horse along the outside of the town hoping to find a less crowded way to enter. Even though his brown mare was terrified, she did what he asked of her as she had been trained to do. For the first time Jack admitted that perhaps the blind obedience of a trained horse was better than a semi-wild mustang, making the compromise on his most recent steed seems to be serving him well.

He hadn't waited for her to slow as she darted from the tree line and along the fence of the corrals, already leaving the saddle before she started to skid to a halt beside the pig stys. He stumbled a bit as he tried to keep his feet under him, but ran off after a rather seamless emergency dismount. He congratulated himself as he bounded up the stairs and into the attic. Finding his sniper rife Jack shatter one of the windows with the butt of his gun. Using the higher vantage point, he set about dispatching tens of cannibals and possibly one normal person (by accident). He noticed that a few people were doing the same thing from a roof down the doctor's way.

There seemed to be no end to them! It's like they were multiplying! Jack's scowl deepened when he heard the staircase rattle. He quickly lunged across the room and picked his shot gun up from the crate by his bedside. Training it on the doorway, he was fully prepared for a cannibal. He was not, however, prepared for someone that looked like they had been rotting in the ground for ten years. Shooting it straight to the head, the power of the shotgun sending the corpse reeling back and toppling over the railing.

This was getting weirder and weirder. Reloading his sniper and, on second thought, his hunting rifle as well Jack went back to the window. He rested the spare rifle against the wall by his feet while he used the other to dispatch cannibals and corpses by the wagon load, switching over quickly when the rounds ran out.

He heaved the greatest sigh of relief in his entire life has he shot dead the last remaining crazy. Taking a few minutes to dress and equip himself properly Jack hurried for where he knew the other survivors where on the roof a few buildings down. He couldn't see his horse anywhere. Whistling loudly, Jack wasn't surprised when she never came for him. He expected someone must have grabbed her and rode off, something she would have been all too willing to do.

Whatever, he could mourn a loss of $250 later. That's what he gets for buying a horse from the stockyard.

Walking quickly down the street, Jack couldn't resist looting a few bodies for much needed ammo and money. As he neared, Jack cried out to the few people arguing on top of the roof. A lady screamed in fright and one of the men turned around and tried to shoot him.

"Jesus Christ!" Jack yelled as he jumped to the side, "I ain't no cannibal!"

"He's bit!" the lady screamed, pointing at where blood from Jack's torn wounds had stained his bandages.

"That wounds from a boar earlier today ma'am," Jack said with a little disdain in his voice. Fancy that, shooting at him! Sure he looked like a rather wild character, but he was pretty sure he didn't look like a cannibal.

"Sure, sure, that's what they all say," another one of the survivors called down to him. Jack counted four guns being trained on him and felt dread starting to gather in his gut. "Then they start twitching, and screaming, and before you know it that 'normal' person is one of them!"

"What are you talking about you crazy son of a-" the lead speaker opened fire on him, which seemed to be the signal because everyone else started having a shot at him too. Jack cut his looses and sprinted for cover.

"This is why I never come here!" he shouted, cursing the gods as he held onto his hat and ran for dear life into the Ghost Forest. Gun fire following him all the way out of town,

'"I hate Thieves Landing!"

* * *

(Back In Beecher's Hope)

So that was the story of how he ended up having to walk home through the night. Traumatic series of events aside, he was barely recovered from being attack unawares by a boar that morning - all in all he really wasn't in the mood to entertain the corpse in his bathroom.

"Look this really mustn't be hygienic. Can you leave? I've got several open wounds here that shouldn't be within five meters of you if I can help it."

The corpse's head tilted to the side. Jack wondered what there was to be confused about as he rattled about the medicine cabinet. Hand finally grasping what he was looking for, Jack turned to the corpse and resisted the urge to smack his head against a wall.

"You are aware that you're a corpse, right? You're a dead body that's been reanimated because of some weird cannibal voodoo that went down in Thieves Landing tonight. I should know - I was there! Nearly died! Although... would I have died or been magically reanimated straight away?" A pause as Jack mulled that idea over. "And I lost my horse, I only had that thing for a week!" In all honesty that was nearly a record for horse ownership. They ran off on him the second he took his eyes off them. The very _second._

Jack unraveled muddy bandages, wiped his skin clean with a washcloth, and started covering his wounds with the white powder of the phenol. He had quite a large jar of it, so felt safe in being liberal with the use. The corpse had retreated a few steps and was leaning back against the far wall - enough space between them now for Jack not to feel like his wounds weren't being contaminated by dead-person spores. He then rattled around and found a stash of bandages. Instead of wrapping them on straight away, he bundled them up and took them out to the kitchen area to steam them over the kettle. Ma would be proud of him.

The corpse followed quietly. Jack found that ignoring him while also keeping one eye open in case he went crazy was a hard feat. He decided to interrogate instead.

"Oi so you pop out of the ground close by? You said this was your house... you use to be the owner or something. I don't know who owned the place before my old man bought it - but you must be one of em, eh?" The corpse was inspecting the dinner table quietly while Jack talked. It was hard to read a near-skeleton's emotions, Jack was finding out.

"Aye used to own this place. The Bureau confiscated it after I died, I think. They might have been who your father bought it off... " the corpse moved across the room to inspect the empty fireplace. "So how many years it been? It must be, what, 1940 something now?" Jack snorted loudly and nearly tipped over the kettle.

"It's 1915, ya loon."

The corpse stilled.

"So the farm hasn't been in the family for long then?" Jack turned away from folding the bandages to regard the corpse with an amused look.

"Nah, not long at all. My old man was a hopeless farmer - couldn't make weeds grow let alone a pasture. He went and go himself killed by some Blackwater gang - owned them money or something. Eh, it passed to me but I've only just returned recently to it. Been out west these last few years, bounty hunting and stuff."

"Bounty hunting?"

"Yeah, had to work off the family debts and all that. Officially I'm also a member of the military, 'territory marshal' they call it, ha, get a nice salary for it, so I don't really give a shit." Jack crossed his arms and shrugged. The corpse looked terribly confused - he supposed the world must have changed a lot since he died.

"Territory marshal?"

"Yeah its like... a bounty hunter that's employed by the law. It's good for me because technically I rank above the common lawman, only sheriffs and their deputy's can order me around. That's a lot of fun."

The corpse shuffled back over to the dinner table, likely so they could inspect Jack more closely. Those empty eye sockets were a bit unnerving.

"You don't look like any lawmen I know."

"As I've already explained, it's all _technically_. If the authorities want to pretend that I run around collecting criminals to 'keep the peace' instead of 'collect bags of cash' then I'm more than happy to indulge then and accept the wages they offer me. The perk of being able to flash my badge and name around in towns and get lawmen to leave me the fuck alone is nice too." Steam was rising off the kettle now, Jack turned to start sterilizing the bandages.

"When I was alive... feels weird saying that... but, yeah, when I was alive I wasn't too friendly with the law."

"Ar yeah? Don't worry about me, I genuinely don't give a shit as long as there isn't a bounty on your head, you can tell me what cheeky things you got up to back in the day Mr Corpse."

A long silence passed. Jack assumed he wasn't going to get an answer and so pottered away without a care, sterilizing the bandages with up most care.

"I don't think there will be a bounty still... killed a few people, robbed a few banks, ran in a gang for a few years. Am I the type of person you would hunt down?" The corpse laughed, dry and wheezy because of his half-missing throat.

"Wow, a real deal criminal eh? In my house? Ha, yeah, if you're worth over three hundred I'd be on your trail in an instant. We don't have too much of the large gang crime like they did at end of the century. Not as many places to hide anymore - largely thanks to people like me!"

They shared a laugh. Jack started to wrap the first sterilized bandaged around his torso.

"Yeah? Well I'm happy to hear that. I'm ashamed of what I did - of what our gang did. Faked my death and ran away to start a new life on this ranch... but sins have a way of coming back to haunt you."

"How did the ranch life go?"

"It was nice. Quiet and calm, you know. Had a herd of cattle, had some mustangs I was breaking in to sell at the markets. It was nice."

"Would you be open to starting again? I don't know much about farming, but you do. You can live here, in your old house free of charge, and we can work together to get her back to her old hay days. That sound like something you'd be interested in?" Jack wasn't sure, but the corpse might have unshed tears in his eye sockets.

"That sounds like... a bit too good to be true to be honest with you. This is like a second chance at life - you messing with me?" Jack tucked his bandages close and walked over to the corpse, the dinner table stretching in between them. He searched that disgusting face and found someone he could trust under it all. Call him crazy.

"Nah, honest. Who better to help me get started than someone whose worked this very land? Sounds only logical to me."

"Thank you. This... this means a lot. Especially if it's only 1915, my family could still be alive somewhere. If I could find them-"

Jack decided to cut him off right there, one hand going up to silence him.

"Maybe not buddy. Might freak them out if you turn up looking like this. You're undead, okay? People are going to shoot you the instant they see ya. If you leave for the shops or something your gonna die. I can't even guarantee your safety on my own land, if some undead hunting party sweeps through and lines you up. Just... be aware of your state, okay?"

"Yeah, you're right, you're right."

Of course he was right. Now, where was that tin of jerky he left in the cupboards? He was _starving._


End file.
